The Future Of SF

There seems to be a lot of uncertainty about The Future Of SF. This is only natural; in the olden days, most SF used to be about the future, but now, in the space-year 2003, we're actually living in the future. What can SF do now?

• Ken Mac Leod has written about Science Fiction After The Future Went Away
• Niall Harrison links to some articles in his now-deleted livejournal (<lj:malenfant/41089> and <lj:malenfant/41946>). Specifically, Norman Spinrad's hypothesis, described in the October/November Asimovs Science Fiction, is that the future is Fantasy, specifically Fantasy pursued using an SF technique (what we might call Hard Fantasy). He lists Perdido Street Station, The Last Hot Time and Apple Seed as evidence. Niall adds Ted Chiang, Michael Marshall Smith, ASH and His Dark Materials. However, it is not clear that this is a trend, since this sort of thing has always been around.
• Authors like M John Harrison and China Mieville champion the cause of The New Weird.